It all started about a month ago when my 11 year old daughter convinced Mom to kill some time with her in the local pet store. She’s been pestering me forever to get another dog and I keep telling her when all the other pets (Hamster, Rabbits, Cats) she’s acquired die, then she can have a dog.
Well she came home from the pet store all excited about this little baby Eel that looked really cool and wanted to set up one of my old dismantled aquariums in the basement.
I must be harboring some long hidden latent desires because before I could go into my usual NO NEW PETS routine, I heard myself say “YAH!!! That would be really cool”.
We got right busy setting up an old 25 high with the Eclipse 2 self contained filter and light hood. We stocked it with 6 sacrificial Danio Zebras to get things cycling and to my surprise after 4 weeks they still look no worse for the wear and tear. By the way, the Eel turned out to be some kind of saltwater tank buster that could get 2 feet long, so that was definitely out. During this time I started reacquainting myself with the hobby by scouring the internet and printing good pictures of small community fishes to entice her with.
This has been a really fun Father Daughter project that’s rekindled my interest as well. So when I came across this forum, I was rather smitten by Hillstream Loaches and Martin’s river stream manifold. I’m an incurable do it yourselfer and decided that I wanted build one.
One of the guys at work said he had an old 55 he would give me but it needed some work. I picked it up that night.
He said he kept a Lizard in it but if you ask me I think he stored his chainsaws in there.
It’s also got a fairly big chip out of one of the corners, a ton of scratches and appears to have been made with no top strap. I’ll definitely test fill it outside in case it wants to blow out and toss my prized possessions all over the basement carpet.
Before you all panic, I do have a plan B. Seems this PACIFIC west coast aquarium shop in California, miss-named if you ask me as: ATLANTIC Tropical Aquarium, has a killer deal ($49) on new 60 gallon tanks with much better river tankish dimensions than the old skinny 55.
http://www.crystalviewtank.com/prod01.htm
The catch is they do Will Call only and offer no shipping. Not a problem. I have some good Marine buddy’s stationed down by them in California at camp Pendleton that will be shipping out soon and need to bring all of their worldly possessions home before they go overseas.
One of them drives a truck and has already offered to pick up a new tank for me. Cool!!!
In the mean time I’ll resurrect this old tank with some new silicone.
This silicone is amazing stuff. Even after you’ve got all the big stuff off, you can go back over it with a couple of new blades and still get thin bits up.
All cleaned up and ready to be resealed.
Here’s my rendition of the “Martin Manifold” The 4 way cross pipes are a little more expensive but it’s about the only way to fit a three wide manifold in the narrow bottom 55G. I plan on running 2 802’s and hang an Aqua Clear 70 filter on the end of the tank and plumb it through the manifold.
I’m using the Becket pond pump pre-filters sold at Home Depot. I bought the last 2 they had and neither of my local stores has bothered to restock them yet.
Well any self respecting River Tank has got to have good stones, so I called my 16 year old Son from work one hot day last week and said “put on your swim trunks, were going on a river trip”. I jetted straight home did a quick change into shorts and off we went up the Molalla river, home to some of the best and worst (I’m reformed now) times of my youth. It’s a beautiful river with lots of columnar basalt formations and a good chance to find some decorative wood.
A little low this late in the summer but this hole always put out some good trout fishing not to mention being good for a swim.
Evening was fast approaching so after a quick dip to cool off we started getting a little more serious about finding pretty rocks and wood.
It’s been thirty years since I was that skinny (but I’m smarter?).
We decided to follow the middle fork up over the top and come home down through the Clackamas river drainage.
Along the way we hiked into a spot that had some old log jambs to scrounge through.
We found more wood than we had time to look at.
Caleb found me some good pieces though. We’ll go back up to search some more next weekend for a few days with the whole family.
I mostly searched for river rocks. I wished I had a net because these little inch long fish were darting around and I would have liked to catch a coulple and see if they were Salmon or steelhead (I can hope) smolt.
Obviously the fish don’t care how pretty the rocks are but I have ulterior motives. I’ve done some pretty good rock trading in the past with the local LFS’s and plan to absorb some of the costs this way again.
I spied this old log hanging over the creek and knew it was going to give up something good, that is, if I was willing to hike back to the truck for a saw.
After a good bit of sweat and effort I pried my prize away from the stump for a photo shoot. It’s amazing what a little water and evening light will do for a long dead root.
Now if I just had Martin or Ken’s photo talents.
We had less than an hour of light left so we had to keep moving up the river and spent much less time than I would have liked in this spot but I couldn’t help but stop and make a quick hike into an old pond that I used to play in.
It’s still there just as I remember except the trees around the edge that they cut back to allow fire helicopters to safely dunk their buckets had grown back.
Some cool looking moss that grows next to the pond.
We finally crested over the ridge that breaks over into the Clackamas river drainage.
We had just enough light left to fill a bucket full of this basalt that shears off like shale.
It should make some good caves or LFS trading stock.
I would liked to have chronicled the trip down the Clackamas but with no daylight left it ended up being a dark drive for home and a late night dinner (gotta love the wife) kept warm in the oven.
Next weekend I’ll kick around up here some more with the family and see what we can find.
WARNING THE ASSIMILATION HAS BEGUN!!!!!!
Very interesting write up and pictures. 
). Sewellia are another possibility. Take a look at these articles if you haven't already:
You're very lucky to have gorgeous countryside like that to go collecting in. Beautiful stream and great roots you found.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
